Have you read a book which at first glance shouldn’t strike you as particularly great, let alone beautiful, but on reflection just kind of blows you away?
My pick:
A Clockwork Orange (The British Version): The book is brutally violent, even by today’s standards, but the prose! I thought the nadsat speech was chilling and catchy even after all this time, especially if you speak Russian. The 21st chapter in the British version though just haunted me:
Alex doesn’t so much rehabilitate himself as much as he just grows up and burns out on all the violence. The British version ends with him abruptly changing directions, giving up his criminal life and going off in search of a new life. I especially loved Anthony Burgess’s justification of the last chapter in which he opines that it is just as unrealistic to say that a man can’t change and grow as it is to end all stories with a pollyana happy ending. I especially loved his comment regarding the American publisher who left out this “happy ending.” (“The Americans, he said in effect, were tougher than the British and could face up to reality. Soon they would be facing up to it in Vietnam.”)
Sure - Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. The story of a series of killings told from the perspective of the killer himself, a sadistic small-town sheriff. Its adherence to an awful internal consistency makes it feel a bit too real. Like putting on slimy clothes. But beautifully rendered.
Good call. I went on a Jim Thompson kick a few years ago when Black Lizard reprinted a bunch of his stuff; The Nothing Man was one of the most chilling books I’ve ever read.
I pick Lolita . Beautiful language, especially when you consider that it wasn’t Nabakov’s native language. I like the “Nabakovian parentheses”! And I don’t know why, but I really like:
Officer, officer there they go-
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores
Actually, I like that whole poem, but that’s my favourite stanza
I like A Clockwork Orange too, especially:
The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets threewise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder…Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver
A childhood favorite in which I find great beauty, and even profundity, is Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. People who know this book only through the Disney “Mr. Toad” cartoons might be surprised to learn that the original work has a dark wistfulness about it, and there are layers of meaning that adults may find more meaningful than children do.
I choose **Blood Meridian ** by Cormac McCarthy. I’ve heard some complaints about the sentence structure that he uses in this book, but I don’t think that I’ve ever read a book that haunts me the way that this one does. It’s harshness and beauty all rolled up into one.
(I’d also put **Clockwork Orange ** at a close second.)
My daughter was watching the film Holes on the Disney Channel last night. One of her teachers read it to her a few years ago and her sixth grade teacher is having her class read the book now.
We were talking about the book and she said, “I wish I could write a book like that. Everything fits together like a perfect puzzle.” I couldn’t agree more. What a well-deserved Newbery award—clever plot and it tackles issues like racism and poverty and the justice system.
Note that the last chapter of A Clockwork Orange was restored to American editions in 1987. Also, Stanley Kubrick chose to leave out the last chapter in his film of the novel. Interestingly, the American publisher had an appendix in the early editions which was a dictionary of Nadsat.
I nominate *The Public Burning * by Robert Coover. An oddly lyrical and moving book considering the climax of the book and it’s subject matter. i.e. the public execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I’d only read The Universal Baseball Association by him previously. As a baseball fan I was assured it was a must read. It was okay but not impressive. With a character named J. Henry Wah it wasn’t too hard to figure out the direction of the book. Both books are probably out of print by now but should be available in libraries and large used book stores.
That is my favourite children’s book ever. My dad used to read it to me when I was very little. Then when I was older I read it myself. I must have read that book about 20 times, and I’ve still got the BBC claymation show on VHS somewhere.
A lot of people think Geek Love is a horrifying and disgusting book, but for some reason I think it’s beautiful. Maybe because it’s such a tragedy, I don’t know.
Oddly, I thought “And Their Eyes Were Watching God” a moving and beautiful book which, incidentally, includes the death of a major character due to a hurricane.
I read this book which I picked up for a couple of dollars called Glove Puppet. It’s almost one of the most awful books I have ever read, but somehow manages to be incredibly beautiful (in a drugs sex and incest kind of way)
I have a large illustrated edition that I’ve read over and over again, and it really is a lovely book. Most editions that I sell, however, are abridged, with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter generally being omitted.